No, attack squirrels didn’t gnaw off Detroit man’s testicle

A fake news story that’s been circulating online lately reported that a cross-eyed Detroit woman was arrested for training wild squirrels to attack her ex-boyfriend, who lost a testicle and two fingers to the rodent attacks.

The story published by World News Daily, while absurd, was written in traditional news style, complete with quotes from Detroit’s actual police chief, James Craig, purported to have been made during a press conference that never happened.

The story, apparently a preemptive April Fools joke published Friday, March 31, is one of the most read stories on the website that specializes in far-fetched, satirical news stories.

The Detroit Police Department on Monday posted that the story was fake on its Facebook account:

The Facebook post had gotten 171 reactions, 63 comments and 173 shares as of Wednesday afternoon.

The World News story reported the arrest of a Detroit woman accused of training dozens of squirrels to carry out violent attacks on her former boyfriend on numerous occasions.

The woman, a former circus animal trainer, taped photos of her ex-boyfriend on the faces of two training dummies and was exposed by her boyfriend after he spotted her “yelling orders” and “cheering” her mercenary squirrels from behind a bush,